Coffee
by Chokopoppo
Summary: "He would follow the boy to the ends of the earth in every cycle of time, if he could. So he does." (Fixed code.)


"I had a dream about you last night."

Ptolemy glances up from his coffee. It is dark and flavorless and awful. He doesn't even drink coffee, except for when it's made for him, and then only out of politeness. "Really?" He says, his eyes sparkling in place of a smile, "what happened in it?"

The professor shifts almost uncomfortably in the chair across the table, except that he is never uncomfortable, not really. They are in his apartment, small and unkempt as it is, smelling faintly of coffee and strongly of the cigarettes he always starts but never has the energy to finish. He has met this boy many times before, though Ptolemy never remembers it. "Well, it was - I mean, it was more of a nightmare, really," he says, and Ptolemy's shoulders deflate a little, "I don't know why I brought it up. I just remembered." The coffee in his hand diverts him. Every time he sleeps, he watches the boy die again. He doesn't know why he closes his eyes anymore.

The boy stares at the coffee in his hands again, inspects the threads of his hoodie sleeves. "Is this…" his eyebrows furrow, but somehow, he does it gently. The professor doesn't know how he can be so gentle in everything he does, only that he is. "…Okay? Whatever we have. Is it sanctioned? Is it…I mean, is it legal?" He looks up, and his eyes burn straight through the professor's head. "Are you going to lose your job, or something?"

Bartimaeus laughs and rocks back on his chair like an adolescent boy, though he has never been one. "This isn't _high school_ , kid," he says, "besides, it's not like we're fucking."

"True." Ptolemy wishes they were. He will never say this out loud. "But we're meeting outside of classes a lot. Even if there's no…relationship, I've spent the night here a couple times. I'm sure that looks suspicious. Isn't there some…student-teacher protection agreement or something?"

"Kid, again, _college_. There's no scandal over a student spending the night at a professor's place. Even if there _was_ , I mean, they'd have to punish half the humanities department, and the entire drama departme- ow!" Ptolemy kicks him under the table. Right in the shin, too. With shoes on. "I'm just saying," Bartimaeus continued on, a little more aggravated in the face of Ptolemy's single raised eyebrow, "I'd get a slap on the wrist, tops. I've got tenure, _and_ I work my ass off. Sometimes. I'm not going anywhere." This is a lie. If Ptolemy asked him to go anywhere, he would follow. He has done it a hundred times before in a hundred lifetimes before this one, and he will do it five hundred times again on command.

Ptolemy does not know any of this. Ptolemy only knows that his professor smells like cigarettes and chalk and TUMS, and always looks tired when he thinks no one is watching, and uses a green pen when he corrects essays because he considers red pens an affront to white paper for reasons he will never explain. And he always makes coffee when Ptolemy is in his office or apartment, even though he knows Ptolemy hates coffee, because it 'builds character'. And when he smiles, Ptolemy feels like a twelve year old with a crush all over again. He's not even that attractive. He must be nearly fifty, greying in places and tired, so incredibly tired when no one is looking, and sick and raggedy, but he is so…something. Ptolemy is twenty-three and ready to have a PhD in everything, and he still has no words for Bartimaeus. Like something beyond comprehension.

Also, he drinks coffee at top volume. It is beyond irritating.

"So how's your essay coming along?"

"I haven't even started it," Ptolemy says, stares out the window into the dark night beyond. He can't remember if it's raining or not - the noise of the various desk fans drowns out the possibility of sound.

His professor clicks his tongue. "It's due in, like, a week, Ptol," he says, and lights the cigarette he knows he won't finish. "You come to me for help?"

The boy shifts. Whenever his gaze moves, Bartimaeus wonders how his eyes can be so dark and so bright at the same time, like cold, ancient stars waiting for their time. "I wanted to get away," he says, "I don't want to write any more papers or do any more labs or listen to lectures on the theories of a hundred and one old dead men who mean nothing to me. I want to do something else. Go somewhere else."

Bartimaeus breathes in smoke, blows it out slowly. "You know," he says, after a long silence, "I hear Alexandria is nice this time of year."

Ptolemy eyes his professor carefully. He is trying very hard not to smile. "I think what you _meant_ to say," he says, forcing his lips into a straight line, "is, 'don't give up now, the hard work you put in now will pay off in the future, you are the bright hope of the future, blah, blah, blah', or something. Right?"

"Right, well- " Bartimaeus waves the cigarette around vaguely, "obviously, you already know all that, so why would I bother you with that garbage? Worst thing a teacher can do is lecture on what his student already knows. You know who said that? Confucius."

"Confucius did _not_ say that."

"Okay, kid, tell you what," he starts again, leaning across the table and smiling like a fourteen-year-old boy about to blow something up, "you finish this semester strong - write your papers, do your labs - and you come with me on my sabbatical. Which I'm taking next year, because seriously, fuck Britain. I'm taking off for at least a year. For my health."

Ptolemy feels like his stomach has dropped out of his body. But in a good way, maybe. "Where are you going?"

"I dunno. South somewhere, maybe. You decide," he says, and leans back, watches the boy change in some ardent glow, "and I'll follow."

It is the only way he knows how to survive.


End file.
